


Worth It

by AttackoftheDarkCurses



Series: Attack's Short Fics (Under 15K) [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Author is working out her post-TROS rage, Ben Solo Lives, Dark, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Death, F/M, Fix-It, Force Visions, No Pregnancy, Resurrection, Rey takes her HEA, Visions of the Future, almost canon compliant, angry rey, canonverse, mention of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:15:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22960030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AttackoftheDarkCurses/pseuds/AttackoftheDarkCurses
Summary: “Then, when you wake up next, do you think...”“I think you’ll die,” she whispers.Just before Ben dies, he and Rey share visions of what their lives would have been together.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Attack's Short Fics (Under 15K) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567351
Comments: 89
Kudos: 413
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts), TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	Worth It

**Author's Note:**

> From this prompt, which I posted myself: "Just before Ben dies, he and Rey share a vision of what their lives would have been together. Rey takes this vision as confirmation that he can come back, and she's determined to make that vision come true." 
> 
> I mostly kept to it.

His mouth is soft. 

Everything around them is hell. People are dying, people are losing hope. Rey feels their deaths, both the good and the bad—though the line blurs—and Exegol, maybe the whole galaxy, is on fire. Pain lances through her body, and his, too. She can feel it. She can feel _everything._ The fear, the panic, the brief moment of victory, though she’s not sure which side it’s from.

So much _bad,_ but it pulses and turns and conflates and disappears at the point where his lips press to hers. At the place where his hand grips her, every bit of bad dissipates into _right._

 _You know what’s happening, don’t you?_ comes a whisper of his voice across the bond. 

She does. She can feel that, too. Can feel his life force in her, can feel _his life_ running through her veins, beating her heart, forcing the breath into her lungs. 

He’s fading.

 _Yes,_ she sends back. In a desperate moment, he tightens his arm around her, works his jaw, and she realizes she can’t, _can’t_ handle this being their first, last, and only kiss. 

She pleads, _How do I stop it? Tell me, please. Ben, I can’t—_

* * *

It’s with a shuddering sob that she wakes. Her chest is tight, constricting her breath, so it comes out in short, gasping pants, and if she had the air, she’d scream. Rey settles for sobbing, but it’s the sort of sobbing that feels like it’ll never end. She’s moments from collapsing in on herself, but something’s prodding at her, poking at her, like there’s something she’s forgotten. 

She follows the feeling, buried deep in the part of her mind that seems almost blocked off, hidden away, and when she digs down, draws it out, pries open that box, and sees what’s inside, Rey’s eyes snap open, because she can’t face that yet.

The Falcon. She’s on the Falcon. It’s all a little fuzzy around the edges, little details absent, but it’s recognizable. In a snap, she rushes off the bed and finds the fresher, emptying what little contents there were of her stomach because _no, no it can’t be real._ She couldn’t have, isn’t capable, all that loss, all that _rage_ that burned through her lungs and veins like fuel lit on fire—

“Rey?”

His voice is as soft as his mouth, and in the most terrifying way, that’s all the confirmation she needs. That, and the memory of warmth that was next to her as she sobbed, before leaving the bed.

She lets out another shuddering breath, then wipes her mouth and stands. Without answering him—because she doesn’t know how any of this is real—she rinses her mouth, washing it out, cleaning her teeth. She takes her time, terrified to turn and see him, because then it will truly be real.

What she’s done.

His voice comes more gently this time. “Rey?”

When she finally turns, he’s _there_ and _real,_ and, maybe more terrifyingly, _alive._

Her eyes trace over him and his disheveled hair and his healed body and his loose sweater, and she lets out a long breath, trying to accept the reality she’s being presented with.

“You—you’re alive,” she breathes. “Did… did I really do that? Did I—”

Ben tilts his head, concern crossing his expression, and at the look on his face, she stops. She can’t bring herself to say the words. 

“Not yet,” he finally says. He sounds resigned. Sad. “I don’t think you’ve chosen yet.”

Somehow that’s not better. Rey wipes her eyes, and when his arms wrap around her and pull her close, she realizes she’s shaking. He holds her until she stops. It’s minutes, maybe even hours later, when she says, “You were dead. Or… dying?”

“Not yet,” he says again.

Rey pulls back to look up at him, her tears dried on his sweater, and that’s when it clicks—why everything’s blurry around the edges. “This is a vision,” she whispers. 

He gives her a single nod of confirmation. “For both of us, I think.”

“How long will it last?”

 _Forever,_ she begs the Force. _Please, make it forever. It’s the least you can do._

Ben only gives her a sad, “I don’t know.”

So she takes in a breath, and kisses him again while she still has the chance.

And she keeps that box—that locked up truth of what she has to do for any of this to be real—shoved down, deep inside herself. She tries to forget that it feels like her half of their soul is shriveling into something dark and horrifying.

* * *

Rey wakes again, clutching her chest at the memory of the worst dream she’s ever had. A dream of countless deaths, an impossible choice, a ruined, tarnished half a soul, and...

And there’s laughing.

Her eyes flutter open, and she sees she’s in another bed, but this one isn’t on the Falcon. It’s bigger and softer, and the other side of it is still a little warm when she runs her hand over it. The laughing continues, just through a door she sees off to one side of the bedroom.

Things are still fuzzy around the edges. Rey wills herself to stand, to put her feet on the ground that’s not really there, and she finds she’s in a long-sleeved shirt that’s far too big to be her own, and nothing else. Hesitantly, she steps out of the bedroom, nervous for what she might find.

It’s just Ben, leaning against a tiny kitchen counter, laughing with two young Wookie children who seem to be playing a game at the kitchen table.

Ben’s face lights up when he sees her, and he collects her in his arms, giving her a much-needed hug. In a murmur, he says, “Did you know Chewie has grandchildren? I think he’s allowing us sanctuary on Kashyyyk.”

His hand runs up and down the length of her spine until she relaxes against him, sighing out a breath along with the soft confirmation, “You’re alive. Whenever I wake up, you’re alive.”

He presses a soft kiss to the top of her head. “Because of you.”

At the reminder—at the faintest hint of what she did, or _does,_ or will do, or… might do?, she tears up, and her breath goes shaky. She clutches at his chest with a dry sob. “I—I really did that. I—”

“Only if you choose to,” he says gently. “It’s your choice. I think this is only one possibility.”

The longer he holds her, the more it feels like his half of their soul is healing hers.

She cries, and cries, and cries into his chest.

That box stays buried.

* * *

Rey doesn’t open her eyes right away when she wakes. She takes a moment. Feels the silky sheets beneath her, frowning at how unfamiliar they are. She reaches out in the bed, and her tentative fingers find just what she’s looking for—the warmth of his body. Slowly, Rey slides her hand over the contradictory soft and hard planes of his bare chest, confirming that he’s real.

He’s as real as can be, in a vision.

She blinks her eyes open, seeing the small smile of his that’s waiting for her.

“Good morning,” he whispers. “I guess the Force has more to show us.”

Across the bond, she sends _You’re here. You’re alive. You’re mine._

 _Yes, yes, and yes, always,_ is the response she gets.

Rey swallows, shoving down the truth of the decision that must lead to _this,_ and she tugs at his shoulder until he gets the hint and rolls over her, kissing her soundly. His weight feels so grounding, so real over her, that she wraps her arms around him, pulling him closer and closer until there’s no more space between them.

She tries not to cry, tries not to think of anything but him and their future—the future they could have—as he pushes into her, seeming to feel just as frantic and desperate as she does. It doesn’t escape her, that this could be their only chance.

Ben fills her entirely, forcing the breath from her lungs as she adjusts to feeling him not only as a bondmate, or as the owner of the other half of her soul, but as her lover, too. He goes still, staring down at her with the same wide eyes he had when he brought her back to life.

And then he kisses her, and he grips her hip, and starts to work himself in and out of her, fucking her like they’ll never get another chance.

When she shatters into pieces, it feels like she’s being brought back to life all over again.

She’s too lost in him to remember what she’ll do to make this real.

* * *

The next time she wakes, it’s in the same room. The same bed. His side is cold, and her skin prickles with trepidation when she doesn’t see him. 

It’s an apartment, she realizes. Theirs? How they get the credits to afford it, she’s not sure, but she spots a small open bag that seems to hold some of their clothing, sitting out on a low chair, and she gets the impression their lodging is temporary.

Ben enters the bedroom, wide-eyed and nervous. “Someone was at the door,” he explains, his voice rushed and anxious. “They said you’re expected downstairs? I think the Resistance put us up here. Or… whatever government is left. I don’t know.”

Oddly, Rey can’t find it in herself to care. The part of herself that was dedicated to caring shriveled up and maybe even died the moment the Jedi let her die—the moment the Force allowed Ben to choose her life over his own.

But growing curiosity at the point of this vision forces her out of bed. She hugs Ben, finding an endless supply of comfort in his arms, an endless amount of rightness, and she says, “I’ll go. Stay here. I’ll tell you what happens.”

He relaxes at that, and sits, watching with a hint of a smile as she removes the shirt of his that she seems destined to sleep in. His eyes roam over her as she dresses and wraps her arms, his cheeks flushing as they _both_ remember what they did in the previous vision.

“Come back soon,” he murmurs.

Rey pauses at the door, looking back over her shoulder at him, and promises, “I’ll see you again.” The last thing she sees before she closes the door between them is his hopeful smile.

It’s like her feet know where to go. Things go blurry, so maybe time skips, but Rey goes, quite suddenly, from standing outside their temporary bedroom to standing in what appears to be a… well, not exactly a war room, but something like it. Faceless people bustle around her, talking of meetings and elections, and—

And then she spots them. The little group of Resistance members, though she has a feeling they don’t call themselves that now. Poe and Finn are dressed cleanly, almost _professionally,_ like they’re running the show. Poe’s speaking to a small batch of flustered, busy-looking people, saying something about peace treaties and trade agreements.

Finn’s the first to notice her. His expression turns serious, hardened, and without looking away from her, he elbows Poe and gestures to her.

Slowly, the room goes silent.

It’s as though the whole room is holding its breath. 

Poe’s jaw goes rigid. There’s an underlying accusation to his tone when he asks, “Where have you been?” 

“Hey, come on,” she hears Finn murmur. The man gives her a sympathetic look. “Don’t take it personally,” he sighs, “You’ve just… you’ve been gone a while. A lot’s happened. We could have used your help.”

The way she steps toward them is hesitant. No hugs are offered, and any warmth that was once there is replaced with something a little different. “Help? With… what?”

A few sets of eyes just blink at her. Finally, Poe gestures around at everything, but it’s all blurry. “Oh, I don’t know, re-establishing a functional government? Do you know how much easier it would have been to get some systems on our side if we’d had the last Jedi asking?”

Rey recoils at the word. “I am _not_ a Jedi,” she spits. Her lips curl up.

Silence falls again, until Poe breathes out, sounding stunned, “You really are his granddaughter.”

The reminder squeezes at her chest, like a clamp around her heart. Then the rage seeps in. _Floods_ in, and she says everything she wants, because none of this is real yet, anyway.

“I am _not_ a Jedi,” she snaps, “And if I am his granddaughter— _if_ —then why would you want to use me as your puppet? Don’t you think that’s a rather bad look? If you—” 

“Since we’re diving right in, is this a good time to talk about the man in the apartment we put you in?” Poe interrupts. “Real brave of him to show his face, kind of stupid since we all assumed he was dead. Did you think I’d never seen Kylo Ren’s real face? Did you _really_ think him not wearing a mask would be enough for nobody to notice?”

Her blood doesn’t run cold. It _boils,_ and Rey’s never been more thankful for the fact that this is all a vision, because she wants to choke the air from his lungs, wants to watch his feet dangle, wants to—

“He’s alive?” a surprised, accented voice asks. Her attention redirects to the unfamiliar, tall redheaded man standing behind Rose. “Ren? He lived, too?”

“Ben _died,”_ she hisses, baring her teeth. “You have no idea what I had to do—”

She chokes on her words when her voice cracks. They stare at her blankly, and for a moment, she realizes she’s talking to herself. They aren’t real. Aren’t here. Without really thinking it through, without considering the consequences, she reaches down, drags the box in her mind out into the light, and rips it open, telling them the truth of the brutal pain and deaths and how horrid it was and how she _doesn’t care_ because every time he touches her it heals her and it’s _worth it._

They’re not real, but they respond anyway, mostly in terror.

Finn’s the first one to manage a full sentence. “We—we couldn’t figure out what happened. How we won. We’ve been telling everyone it was luck, but…”

“Rey, he needs to be tried for what he did,” Poe blurts, seeming determined to ignore what she’s said. “He’s a war criminal.”

“And would you try me, too, for what I’ve done?”

They go quiet. 

She huffs cruelly and lets it all out to whatever part of herself or the Force she’s arguing with. “You would try him, and likely kill him for what he’s done. You’d doom me to a life without him, do you even understand what a _dyad_ is?” She gets in closer, tightening her jaw. “However much you fear him, you should be _much_ more afraid of me. I’ve taken more lives. Or… I _will.”_

They start blurring until they aren’t really them, and Rey swallows the rage, wondering for a moment how much she resembles her darker self, wondering for a moment if _this_ is how she becomes that darker self, or if this decision is what prevents that reality.

She tells the blur, “Come after us and you’ll regret it.”

And then she leaves the room, and everything goes dark.

* * *

Time has passed when she wakes. The anger in her chest is gone, as though she’s had time to accept… everything. Her hair is longer, braided over her shoulder, and as she climbs out of the empty, elaborate, and unfamiliar bed, she crosses the spacious room and looks at herself in a mirror.

She hasn’t aged much. Maybe a few years from that day on Exegol, if she had to take a guess, but she looks more peaceful, like she isn’t being used by countless dead Jedi to fix their mistakes. She feels like _herself._ Like she’s starting to learn who she is, and who she wants to be, rather than who others want her to be, rather than a child trying to earn a dead man’s lightsaber.

The room is chilly, and she finds a soft gray robe hanging from a hook on a wall. Assuming it’s hers, Rey pulls it around herself, over the shirt of Ben’s that falls to her bare thighs. Her eyes catch on the gleaming metal around one of her fingers, and in the dim moonlight, she holds her hand up, her mouth falling open at the sight of a wedding band.

They _married._

Or… will marry.

Suddenly in a rush to find him, she whips around, looking for Ben. He’s not sleeping, nor does he seem to be in the room, but then she spots something through the windowed doors to a balcony. Some dark fabric of an open robe fluttering in the breeze, barely visible in the moonlight.

Rey finds him standing there, arms resting on the balcony’s stone railing as he looks out over the water of a lake.

“We’re on Naboo,” he says softly, once he senses her. He glances down at his hand, and she notices a little smile tug up at the corner of his mouth. “I think this is our honeymoon. I once dreamed of bringing you here, so… I think I do.”

He turns to her, leaning against the railing just as she buries herself in his bare alabaster chest, his skin gleaming in the light from the moons. Arms wrap around her, holding her as tightly as he held her that day, on a floor of a temple on a godsforsaken planet. 

Ben kisses at her forehead, and asks, “What happened? Last time?”

She sucks in a breath at the memory, and since she’s not sure she can bear to speak it, she shows him the conversation she had with Poe and Finn through the bond. Briefly, she expects him to be disappointed with her rage, maybe even fear her, because—

“You aren’t something to be feared,” he corrects. 

Against his chest, she murmurs, “Not unless I’m made to be.” She tilts her head back, and her eyes flick up to his, “I think there’s a future where I become that. I think that’s the point of this. That vision of me—that dark me—I think she’s real. I think I could become her.”

He studies her face, giving her a tender look. An _accepting_ look.

“But I can’t tell,” she continues. “I can’t tell what causes it. Is it your death, or is it—is it what I do to bring you back?”

His mouth presses to her temple. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I wish I did.”

Rey doesn’t know either. She leans against him, and feels herself smile as Ben asks, “So where do you think we go from here?” A little playfulness slips into his tone when he adds, “ _Wife.”_

She hums. “Anywhere.”

“What about meeting other force users?” he suggests quietly. “It’s something I wanted to do, once. There are children across the galaxy, and we can teach them differently. We don’t need to steal them away from their parents, don’t need to teach them they can’t love. We can take in the ones that are slaves, the ones that are abandoned… the ones who are like you were. We can do something _good_.”

Her smile falls. “You say that like we need to pay penance for what we’ve done.” 

“Don’t we? Or… don’t _I?_ ”

The truth hits her hard, in a moment of clarity she guesses was the point of this vision. “No. We don’t. Others might believe differently, but…” Tears prick at the corners of her eyes as she sighs, and admits, only to herself, that she feels a startling lack of guilt for what she’s going to do.

After a pause, she says, “If you feel the need to pay penance, or if that’s what you need to do to heal, or manage, then yes. We’ll find them. Teach them. But I will _not_ be a Jedi.”

Slowly, he nods. “Okay.”

He kisses the top of her head again, then works down the bridge of her nose with soft little kisses, before he finds her mouth. Against his soft lips, she murmurs, “We won’t be here when we wake up, will we?”

“No,” he whispers back.

 _Even if I want this to last forever?_ she sends over the bond, as his lips slide over hers.

_No, I’m sorry. I wish this was real, but it’s just one future, and—_

“Help me pretend it’s real,” she asks, longing seeping into her voice as he kisses down her throat. “Just for now?”

Ben drags her down to the floor of the balcony until she’s straddling his lap. He holds her face as they kiss, and as their hands and bodies get more and more desperate, everything blurs at the edges.

* * *

The sound that wakes her is one of a crying child, followed up by the softer sound of Ben hushing them. She cracks her eyes open, glancing around the dim room. It’s more settled-into than anywhere else she’s woken, with photos on walls and clothes hanging in an open closet, and slippers shucked haphazardly into a corner. Rey blinks as she slowly recognizes it.

It’s the same bedroom she woke up in on Naboo. Just a more lived-in version. 

Climbing out of bed, she pulls on the same robe that hangs from the same hook, and follows the soft sounds through an open door, down a short hall. She stills when she glances into an open doorway and sees the source of the noise.

Two children—one older, maybe a teen, and another that might be seven or eight—are sleeping in bunks, and on the other side of the room, Ben’s sitting on a bed next to a little boy, consoling him as he cries.

The little boy has his face covered and his knees pulled up to his chest, and she takes in a slow breath as she feels the all-too familiar anger and fear rolling off him. 

“It’s okay,” Ben coos, letting the boy rest against him as he cries. “It’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with being upset. Was it a bad dream?”

The child nods against him, muttering something about how he lost control during training, and that’s when it hits her—these are the force sensitives they’re teaching. While Ben talks to the boy, Rey closes her eyes and reaches out in the Force, sensing dozens of children—all with fears and anxieties and feelings of abandonment, all those feelings she knows far too much about—sleeping soundly, spread throughout the massive lakeside home.

They must have made their base on Naboo. It makes sense, given how neither of them wanted to leave.

Rey folds her arms over her chest, pulling the robe tight around her as she listens to Ben tell the child that it’s only natural to be angry, to _feel._ She watches the man she loves, the man she’d die for, the man she _will_ kill for, stand, and tuck the little boy back into bed.

Ben takes her hand as they leave the room together, and kisses it. 

“He must be one of the children we’re teaching,” he murmurs when they get back to their bedroom and climb into bed next to each other. “He woke me up—he had a bad dream about getting angry and hurting one of his friends.”

She glances over at him and squeezes his hand. “Do you think things would have been different? If you’d been taught like this?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. He sighs and gives her a soft look. “But I’m not sure I care to know. Even if I feel the need to… I don’t know, pay penance somehow, I don’t know how to regret any of it. Not if it leads to this.” He gestures out at everything around them—at the life they apparently build together. “If it leads to this, I’d make the same choices.” 

They go quiet, just staring at each other for a long moment before he asks, “Do you?”

She caresses his hand with her thumb and runs a finger over the wedding band that matches her own. “Do I what?” 

“Do you regret it? What you did.... What you might do?”

She takes in a deep breath, and finally opens up her mind to him. Fully. Every little bit.

The box dissolves, and light shines on the truth of it all.

And Ben feels what she’s felt—all the deaths, all the lives stolen in mere moments from countless people, both innocent and not, all the power and _life_ that surged through her and into him—and he closes his eyes, and shudders. Rey’s gotten past the point of feeling nauseated as she once felt at facing the reality of her choice.

“Not for a minute,” she finally says. Her words are measured, careful as she explains, “From the outside I can see why it’s horrific. I understand it. And I don’t know if it makes me evil or cruel or selfish, but I think if I don’t do it, I become something much worse.”

His gaze flicks to hers, and he nods gently.

 _You’ve decided, then?_ he asks, via the bond, as though he’s afraid to speak the words and come to terms with this being their last moment.

“I think I decided the moment I knew you’d die,” she breathes. “I think I just needed to accept it.”

His eyes soften. “Then, when you wake up next, do you think...” 

“I think you’ll die,” she whispers, her voice trembling.

Something peaceful settles over his expression. _And now that you’ve seen the result of bringing me back, will it be worth it? Are you sure?_

Rey tilts her head, giving herself one more moment to study him like this, in their some-day marital bed, and then she leans over, cupping his face in both hands, and answers him with a kiss.

* * *

When Rey opens her eyes, pulling away from the kiss, nothing’s blurry. Nothing’s dulled.

The sudden shock of pain she feels isn’t her own, but despite his screaming nerves, Ben’s gaze is wholly focused on her. Slowly, his lips turn into a grin, and his mouth widens into a breathtaking smile.

And she realizes their future, that future she saw, is open for the taking.

He falls and he starts to fade, but Rey knows what she has to do.

She watches him die, feels the rotting in her soul at the loss of him begin, promising to turn her into that deadly, dark version of herself unless she does something to change it.

So she changes it. With steady, unwavering arms, she reaches up to the ships above them, and she _takes._

And it will be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> [ Attack's Twitter](https://twitter.com/AttackotDC)


End file.
